Posts by TeeCee 9435 publicly visible posts • joined 5 Oct 2007
Presumably the thing's largely computer controlled and most of that's "soft" to allow for ease of tuning / upgrades etc.
So, two questions then. Firstly, does it have Bluetooth built in and second, what's the security like?
The prospect of being able to upgrade these things from "V8 rumble" to "Crazy Frog" as they drive past is giving me the giggles here.
I concur with Greyhound / Poodle. That gives you the speed and fluffiness.
Of course, show Googles should be properly groomed with a "Google clip". This involves shaving off most of the hair to leave apparent text* advertising a range of relevant services.
*As seen on the back of a right twat's head.
Having successfully peeled the Centrino badge/sticker (stadge? bicker?) off my laptop without too much trouble, I don't think I'll be flying on an A380 any time soon. The prospect of flying in something where it's possible to peel the wings off, leaving only a slight mark that'll clean off with lighter fuel, makes me anxious.
Mine's the one with the Airbus wings in the pocket and if any pissed-off pilots come in, you haven't seen me. Ok?
I like the idea of 'improving the quality of the music'. Presumably then, the blu-CD version of the Best of Abba is actually Elgar's Enigma Variations and if you splash out on the blu version of the latest Dizzee Rascal ouvre it sounds suspiciously like Led Zeppelin IV.
I'll go with the Sony Maria Callas icon here.
Nope, that doesn't wash (oops). "Jack the Ripper" is a label for an unknown killer or killers who was / were responsible for a series of murders which evidence suggests are almost certainly linked.
World + Dog has a theory on who it was, but there's insufficient proof for any of them to say which one done it.
You can certainly say that you've heard of "the Jack the Ripper murders", but you cannot say that you've heard of the criminal responsible. Just because you can get away with slandering the dead doesn't make it right.
A far better example would be to come up with a named criminal who is known to have been responsible for a specific crime or crimes, but has eluded capture since. Osama bin Laden springs to mind here.
There've been TV ads around since Jesus was a lad offering "chairs that help you stand up" which seem to work in pretty much the same way. There's a general tendancy to "velour armchair that your granny would like" in the more standard product though.
I wonder what the size of the "techy office chairs for coffin-dodgers" market is?
Funny how musicals, live music, overly pneumatic C&W stars and greedy, thieving nutjob jezuz freaks existed before wireless mics isn't it? I wonder how that worked?
I reckon that if this bill goes through, both Dolly Parton and televangelists will continue to exist. Bit of shame really.
Jezza Clarkson said something that offended somebody? Has the world gone mad?
Everyone knows that Jeremy is a model of political correctness and would never make snide, offensive comments about anyone. Especially cyclists, pedestrians, drivers of diesel engined vehicles, those who travel on public transport and of course caravanners, for all of whom he has the greatest respect.
I wonder if something's happened at the beeb recently to cause them to come over all hand-wringing at the slightest indication of any possible offence being caused, however slight?
"....only issue such a fine if they have the google car on CCTV driving in said restricted area..."
Of course, were the vehicle to take any pics while doing this and Google were then to use them, the council would have them bang to rights. In much the same way as if you post a video on YouBoob taken through your windscreen with your dashboard in shot, clearly showing you doing 120 up the M1, you'd get your collar felt regardless of whether any other evidence of this little escapade existed.
This could be the next bit of fun to be had with Google streetview. Spotting pics that can only have been taken from a vehicle placed in an illegal position and pointing them out to the relevant authorities.
"Every beta copy of W7 that is downloaded is one less Ubuntu/Fedora/CentOS/whatever, that is not being downloaded."
Presumably in much the same way that every song downloaded for free is a guaranteed sale of that same song that didn't happen and never will happen.
Apples != Pears. Who knew?
Breaking EU rules. Yeah, right. Big fat hairy deal, here's how this one goes:
EU: "You're breaking EU rules."
FR: "Fuck off."
EU: "Stop breaking the rules."
FR: "Fuck off!"
EU: "We'll fine you if you keep breaking the rules."
FR: "FUCK OFF!"
EU: "We warned you. You broke the rules, here's a big fine."
FR: "Which part of 'FUCK OFF' don't you understand? We suggest that you shove your fine up your arse before we come over there and do it for you."
EU: "Er, right, sorry. Thought we were taking to the Brits for a moment there. You're very naughty boys, please stop doing this at your convenience and try not to do it again too often as it makes us look bad. Ok?"
Too true. Not much "off" Vladivostok either, but pretty bloody close in. Close enough, in fact, to be the dedicated military comms cable connecting the stations in the area that they were tapping. Back then, this required a sub to waffle in, remove the existing tapping device with its logs full of military chat, and attach a new one on a regular basis.
Eventually some Russki pillock snagged the cable with an anchor, requiring it to be repaired and the logging device was recovered. The Soviets would never have been able to prove who was responsible, but for the thoughtful inclusion of a little plate on the exterior surface with serial numbers, maker's name and such which rather helpfully included the words "Made in the USA" for the hard of thinking. Much was made of this at the time.
Of course, the Yanks furiously denied responsibility, claiming that it must have been a stitch up as they'd never be dumb enough to label the thing like that. History fails to record if anyone was dumb enough to believe that the Yanks aren't that dumb.
It's an old adage that for anything to be really funny, there must be an element of truth in it.
Some years ago, a mate working in London told me an interesting tale. He and his colleagues were delighted to find on their arrival one morning, nice shiny new chairs with all mod cons. They were less delighted to find that these were loners while their existing cruddy old chairs were refurbished. Anyhow, after a while said crap chairs were returned, reupholstered, refurbed and with all the nuts 'n bolts tightened up. The celebrations of the management at their financial acumen lasted until about 9:30, when one of the larger of my mate's colleagues arrived and flopped heavily into his refurbed chair. This resulted in a significant BANG and the subsequent destruction of a rack of kit by said large gentleman, now with a stainless steel pipe shoved up his arse.
The cheapskate management ended up paying for the refurb, new chairs, some kit and a large out-of-court injury settlement.
You're in France. You're a bank scammer. You get a load of bank details. Do hack the account with the name "Nicolas Sarkozy" or the one with the name "Jean Bloggues"?
If bank fraud is now so simple that people this monumentally thick can do it, we should be very scared.
Oh, and about the terminology? I reckon that in future, any scam so mind-numbingly stupid that anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together would immediately spot it was doomed to failure should be known as a "Sarkozy fraud".
(We need a Jade Goody icon. Paris is waaay too intelligent to be appropriate here.)
So with a digital camera, a telephoto lens, a computer, some bespoke software and a bit of time you can calculate the necessary details, feed them into a machine and cut a key. This solution replaces, er, plasticene (or a bar of soap at a pinch), a key blank and a file.
Now the security aspect. Who are you more likely to be suspicious of? The bloke taking pics of you at range with a telephoto lens who has a van-load of kit in tow or the bloke sitting at the next table wearing a jacket that may, or may not, have plasticene, a file and a set of key blanks in the pockets.
The one with the plasticene, the file and the key blanks in the pockets, obviously.
All depends really. I have in my hand a 2.2w bulb from a Smith's tachometer.
<Counts instruments>
Speedo, tacho, water temp, oil pressure, fuel, ammeter, clock.
That's 15.4w in total when the lights are on. Does the multifunction unit draw more or less than 15.4w? (Mandatory, 24x7 "lights on" is coming, courtesy of the "we have to do something or people will notice we're a waste of space" types in Brussels).
Never mind that you'd probably need a few extra dials to display all the info available from a modern multifunction display. Oh, and you *still* need a display for the navi system and built in ICE that's de rigeur these days.
Facebook in "people can see your profile" shocker! Pictures at 11.
Tomorrow: An exclusive on how a simple Google search can retrieve information from Facebook and other sites. You'll be amazed!!
Later this week: "Social networking. Is it insecure or what?" A three page analysis by a security company's spokesthing including in-depth opinion interviews with forest dwelling defecating bears and catholic popes.
I think you'll find that the construction of additional concert halls, building of instruments (a *very* time consuming, resource intensive and skilled process) and use of musicians to allow everyone to hear all the music they want "first hand" far outweighs the music-system-in-every-home impact.
Oh and on a slightly off-topic climate cobblers subject, apparently a lunar landscape is typified by the vast quantities of snow and hail up there. Who knew?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3285281/Freak-storm-leaves-Devon-town-like-lunar-landscape-under-2ft-of-hail.html
Presumably, since the "guitar" bit of the package doesn't make any noise and merely sends a signal to the console, it can end up sounding like whatever the heck you want it to. Mellotron is not beyond the realms of possibility.
Guitar synths have been around for a goodly time now, enabling axe men to cover on keyboards, bass, percussion, strings, whatever, in addition to their better-known function of being able to go from "Stratocaster, rear humbucker only" via "12 string acoustic" to "second-hand Les Paul with dodgy strings and loose fretwork" at the touch of a pre-programmed button. The principle's the same.
I believe they were originally invented to save Alex Lifeson's neck from the strain of carrying three guitars simultaneously.
".......no one dies as a result of being unable to make a mobile call....."
Have we really got the stage where we anticipate that in such a situation *nobody* in the carriage will have the intelligence to step into an adjacent one to make the necessary call?
It seems so.
Altogether now: Baaaaaaa!
The coach teeters on the cliff. The gold slides towards the rear.
Since the mass of that much gold would somewhat exceed the mass of anything available to counterbalance it, the fact that the bloody thing didn't plunge over the edge when it moved rearwards indicates one of two things. 1) The thing's nowhere near as unstable as it appears to be, so getting the stuff should just be a matter of walking down the other end, ignoring the unsettling swinging motion or 2) it's all artistic license so the whole thing's a pointless load of cobblers anyway.
What's the point of trying to come up with a scientific solution to a problem which has already caused the laws of physics to bugger off in disgust.?
No helicopters allowed? A classic "where's my flying car?" moment, if ever there was.
"Which in itself is a bit pointless, rather like this story."
Immediately beneath that:
"98 comments"
How sad are we? It's all very well to take the piss out of the Daily Heil and the Beeb for making so much fuss about this, but there's an old saying about pots and kettles that applies here.
(Sad, because I am by being here.)
Also Rover with the original "K" series Metros. They were getting 50+ mpg out of them in "on the road" testing from the pre-production prototypes even back then. They were running waaay beyond stochiometric, well into "lean burn" territory. This is what killed it as the EU cat legislation mandates near-stochiometric burning. Oh, and it was Merc that lobbied like living Jesus to prevent Maggie getting a cat exemption for lean burn vehicles, not GM.
While the emissions from the beast were very slightly higher than a cat equipped one (CO2 wasn't the headline-grabbing trendy emission at the time), once you took into account not refining so much fuel or transporting same around the country in tankers, it won big time.
Had the focus been on CO2 back then, small catless lean-burn petrol cars might have been clocking in at around 65mpg by now.
PS: I know quite a bit about CVTs. Actually the best option for efficiency at the moment is a multi-ratio DSG 'box as the transmission losses are lower. The best niche for CVTs is in disguising the odd power delivery of Atkinson cycle engines as they do quite nicely in Toyota's Hybrid systems.
Nah, it's got "Eco" in its name, so it'll be a diesel. 5000rpm max, with all the power delivered between 1800 and 3000 'cos it'll have loadsaturbos and the tits tweaked off it. But it'll have an eight speed 'box to make this work and Ford's legendary disintegrating dual-mass flywheel to stop it loosening your fillings.
I've often wondered with small turbodiesels if it would save effort if they dumped the engine and just made you row the bloody thing around with the gear lever.
Browse to. Log in (usual MS one). Get started. Add file (a perfectly ordinary, bog standard, no frills, Word 2k3 doc.). So far so painless.
Click file to open:
"This file cannot be viewed in web format. Click here to download and open with Word".
And the point of this was what exactly?
You can almost *feel* the FAIL.
Yeah, nice conspiracy theory stuff, which overlooks the primary and most glaring reason the EV1 failed.
It was crap and nearly all the marketing puff about the range and performance was, er, marketing puff. Still, the fact that's it's complete bollocks never stopped a good conspiracy theory now, did it?
Duff analogy I'm afraid. Example:
Bloke with spaceship from future demonstrating warp drive to 21st century types: "Just a minute while I flip us to Alpha Centauri. You'll be impressed.". <flip> "Wow." "Cool". "Crikey, that's quick". etc.
Bloke from 21st century demonstrating light bulbs to 15th Century monks: "Just a minute while I screw this into a light fitting. You'll be impressed". <frantic search for light fitting in 15th century monastery> "Oh fuck!"
Too true, too true.
Thus we end up in the laughable situation where the tax system *encourages* people to buy small diesels as city cars and they are doing so, in spades. Nitrates, particulates* and such are no longer trendy, so our cities' air quality goes down the tubes, sacrificed on the altar of the Carbon Cult. You couldn't make this shit up.
*Particulate filters need a regular good long blast up the motorway to avoid clogging and failure and are thus not suitable for small cars to be used primarily for short journeys. Urea injection systems are expensive, complex and bulky, thus only suiting large, expensive diesel cars**.
**Yes, the ones the Germans make so much money selling. No prizes for guessing exactly whose motor industry drives EU policy.
With a bit of luck I'll never again have to listen in the pub to the "how we were taught in basic training to wipe our arses using only a bus ticket"* story, replete with nausea-inducing detail, now that the military can carry bog roll with them in the field.
*Presumably the introduction of the Oyster card went down rather badly with the army's logistics corp.
No, he's right. The older cameras used to take a pic of the rear of your vehicle, but the modern ones face the front. That way they get a piccy including the driver, which eliminates the "it wasn't me and I don't know who it was" defence.
The side effect is that motorcyclists now only need to ram on at the sight of the old, film-based, cameras as long as you're riding something generic enough to prevent any detective work ruining the party.
Mines the very plain and extremely ordinary leather jacket that looks just like thousands of others.
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